Officials discuss potential overflow
CARIBOU, Maine — Roughly 30 people attended a public meeting in the Caribou Performing Arts Center on September 8, 2016 in which Alan Kuniholm of PDT Architects and RSU 39 Superintendent Tim Doak discussed progress on a project to construct a new PK—8 school where Teague Park currently stands.
Kuniholm explained that the only item hindering the project, at the time of the meeting, was approval from Washington D.C. regarding a swap of park land. Once approved, the project can continue forward and eventually go to referendum.
Once the meeting was opened to public comment, a majority of the questions were related to potential parking issues once the facility is complete.
One audience member explained that she travels between the existing schools and that parking is already tight, and was concerned that combining all facilities into one building would only exacerbate the issue.
“I’m not going to sit here and make something up because I think you bring up a great point,” said Doak. “The state doesn’t want to pay for more parking. If the community wants to put in an additional space it would be at their expense. We are trying to make this project so it does not have a large burden on the taxpayer. We could have overflow parking near the bus garage. I think, if we run a full school event, we will have some issues with parking, but we will probably be okay for other events.”
“The DOE’s rule of thumb is that they will pay for a space for each staff member plus another 25 for visitors and handicapped parking,” said Kuniholm.
The audience member reiterated that there is currently no parking, and asked why a multi-million dollar project should begin with limited parking.
Kuniholm “You can park on both sides of the bus drop-off loop and probably get an additional 25 cars during a nighttime event. We can get about 100 in the regular parking spot, then another 25 on the surface area, and parallel parking along the parent drop-off loop. Other than shared parking, we don’t have another parking lot here, but we’re doing the best we can to allow shared use and flexibility.”
If more parking is still required, Kuniholm said that, if the Superintendent’s office does not get built, then “we could get another 40 cars in the lot, at least.”
Another audience member said the parking around the building and traffic along Bennett Drive and Glenn street would be “horrendous”
“We had a traffic study and are having a meeting with the DOT next week,” said Kuniholm,” where we are going to be looking at Bennett Drive and turning lanes coming into the school.”
The superintendent added that when the DOT conducted a study on the area last spring, they did not come back with any major concerns and “think the project is doable.”
